Another positive consequence of the unicity model is you don't have disparate municipalities undercutting eachother's tax bases and competing for lucrative employment uses. Look at what's happened in Greater Vancouver and Toronto - so much office space has fled to suburban municipalities in the past 20 years, it's ridiculous. Now each city has horrendous employment sprawl, while Calgary remains extremely centralized. In Calgary, when employers flee the central business district, they land about 4 blocks south in the Beltline! (which is technically classified as 'suburban office space').

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If you're thinking of Vancouver - a reminder that while Vancouver was growing its downtown population (admirably) by about 40 000 people over the past 20 years, the rest of the region grew by over 600,000. Guess what, most of that was in sprawly subdivisions in Surrey or other such urban utopias in the lower mainland.

The problem with Greater Vancouver and its suburbs is many of these suburbs are just as old, and sometimes even older than Vancouver itself. So unlike in other cities, such as Phoenix, these suburbs did not pop up out of no where and are not comprised of just single family detached houses. As the region has grown, these communities have grown into each other and have been absorbed by Greater Vancouver. Give another decade and the same will probably happen to the Metro area of Abbotsford and one day even Chilliwak. Originally New Westminster was the dominant community in the region but then the center of power shifted to Vancouver and has remained there, so consequently all the other towns have become suburbs. Here are some dates of when a few Greater Vancouver towns were incorporated/established, and believe me, back in these days these towns were very separate from one and other:

The problem with Greater Vancouver and its suburbs is many of these suburbs are just as old, and sometimes even older than Vancouver itself. So unlike in other cities, such as Phoenix, these suburbs did not pop up out of no where and are not comprised of just single family detached houses. As the region has grown, these communities have grown into each other and have been absorbed by Greater Vancouver. Give another decade and the same will probably happen to the Metro area of Abbotsford and one day even Chilliwak. Originally New Westminster was the dominant community in the region but then the center of power shifted to Vancouver and has remained there, so consequently all the other towns have become suburbs. Here are some dates of when a few Greater Vancouver towns were incorporated/established, and believe me, back in these days these towns were very separate from one and other:

So according to these dates, Maple Ridge, New West, Richmond and Surrey were all incorporated before Vancouver.

So many of these towns and cities in the suburbs of Van do have their own rich history and have not just popped up out of no where because of urban sprawl.

I know amalgamation is tricky politically, but it might have served Vancouver well. Cities generally function on a regional scale, particularly certain functions of a city like transit and transportation. This is why it was smart to have developed TransLink - a seamless transit system for the region, blind of municipal boundaries. On a planning scale, it might have made sense to either have a metro-government controlling the region, or total almalgamation.

Toronto had a good two tiered governance model down pat from the 50s to the 70s with Metro. It was incredibly heralded and seen as the "city that worked". However, once suburban expansion blasted through the metro boundary into areas like Vaughan, the model broke down.

Harris amalgamated regions, including metro Toronto as a single municipality, but I think it might have been more useful to create a new larger scale Metro-Toronto structure, with the local municipalities as essentially boroughs and the whole 5.5 million person GTA under metro governance.

It's tried to resolve GTA wide issues like transportation with agencies like Metrolinx to solve transportation issues, but the problem is that the TTC has no interest in having a fully integrated regional transit system, whereby its service would be watered down to serve the sprawly suburbs. If it had been done way in the past, before all these local municipalities became fully entrenched, Toronto would have a more functional region in terms of planning, and transportation etc.

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"The marginal players, the guys who thought they could raise some money, hire an architect and call themselves a real estate developer -- those guys are out of business right now." - Ian Gillespie

Couldn't be, not nearly enough development north of FCP and Scotia Bank Plaza.

I'd venture late 90s if we're allowed taking guesses.

Gehry's AGO sticks out like a sore blue thumb ... I don't see RoCP Two's top so 2007 is probably right.

The three white slab off by their lonesme in the foreground were at one time planned to have over 150 neighbours. Thanks god that and the other 60s re-development of tree line lowrises into towers in parks never came to being but, I can't stop to imagine how it may have all looked from the air.